SHAKE YOUR PEACE!

The Summer Walking Tour 2010!!!

2010-07-26T16:47:00.000-07:00

On the morning of Monday Aug 2, at 11am, a group of San Francisco’s most adventurous musicians and their friends and fans will embark on a walking tour across the Golden Gate Bridge and along the California Coastal Trail, performing free concerts each night. See schedule & line-up on our Walking Tour website = http://thewalkingtour.wordpress.com, or RSVP for the event via our Facebook event page link.

The Summer Walking Tour - June 22-27, 2009

2009-06-16T20:22:00.000-07:00

On June 22, two days after the Bicycle Music Festival, eight of San Francisco's most adventurous bands will take off walking from San Francisco carrying everything they need to perform on their backs: fiddles, flutes, guitars, even cellos. For the next five days they'll walk along the California Coastal Trail then up and over Mt. Tam. Each night they'll play a free, unamplified concert.Everybody is invited, and encouraged, to walk, boat, and bus along.

Bands (in merry disorder):
Obo Martin
SHAKE YOUR PEACE!
Sonya Cotton
Cello Joe
Ma Muse
honey.moon.tree
StitchCraft
Justin Ancheta
+ more friends (as they can join)

Schedule:
*all shows are all-ages, 7-9pm, and FREE
Mon. 22 ~ SF, Fort Mason Hostel
Tues. 23 ~ Marin Headlands Hostel
Wed. 24 ~ Muir Beach, Pelican Inn
Thurs. 25 ~ Bolinas, Regenerative Design Institute
Fri. 26 ~ Mt. Tam, Cushing Memorial Amphitheater
Sat. 27 ~ Mill Valley, Mill Valley Music

Utahpia NOW! Tour ... May 4-16, 2009

2009-04-12T00:05:00.000-07:00

Announcing the Utahpia NOW! Tour - our FOURTH annual bike tour of Utah - rolling green in the reddest state in the country! Come pedal with us to outdoor amphitheaters, to high schools, to community gardens, to clubs, and meet some of Utah's coolest bioneers that are supporting act: Utahpia 2009! Check out the Bicycle Tour page to find out where we'll be, and the press release (link on the About page) for forwarding to your reporter aunt that works at the newspaper! We'd love to see you on the road...

'09 Winter Walking Tour rocked!

2009-02-12T13:49:00.000-08:00

The Winter Walking Tour 2009 was so inspiring only walking (not talking) could explain it! Stay tuned for the 15-band Summer Walking Tour 2009 up the California Coastal Trail ~ June 22-28, following the Bicycle Music Festival. Special thanks to the musicians/bands on this tour: StitchCraft, Sonya Cotton, and Cello Joe, and everybody who hosted us along the way!

Winter Walking/ Music Tour gets underfoot!

2009-01-22T12:56:00.000-08:00

Join SHAKE YOUR PEACE!, StitchCraft, and Sonya Cotton Band on the Winter Walk/Music Tour 2009 ~ from Bolinas, CA to San Francisco ~ the first tour we've ever heard of that's traveled from show to show on foot. It's a 3-day tour with GREAT stops:
2/6/09 Bolinas Community Center, 6pm, Benefit for the community garden
2/7/09 Slide Ranch, 7pm FREE
2/8/09 Marin Headlands Hostel, 6pm FREE
and we invite you to grab your tent and come along! We'll be walking the California Coastal Trail, hugging the water the entire way (except for a spot where we'll ascend a 1000-step staircase up a redwood ravine).

We'll post the pictures as soon as we can!

SYP! @ Bicycle Music Festival

2008-10-06T12:04:00.000-07:00

SYP! latest: Gabe's been busy working up new material (more get-on-your-feet-and-dance style stuff), recording on Sonya Cotton's upcoming album, and enjoying the adventures of living in a squat in San Francisco... Hope you enjoy this video from the Bicycle Music Festival, recently posted by our friends at Rock the Bike.

SF Bicycle Music Festival!

2008-06-30T12:24:00.000-07:00

photo: BMF Photo Captain Adam Aufdencamp

I co-direct the Bicycle Music Festival (www.BicycleMusicFestival.com) every year in San Francisco, and last week (June 21) on the longest day of the year, I got to participate in the best festival yet ~ nothing short of a VELORUTION my friends. With zero use of cars or trucks, 500 attendees, 15 pedal-powered bands, outrageous cruiser party rides between the 5 festival stops, on-bike live performances, and the lightest loudest pedal-powered PA ever built, the BMF is being called: "the greenest music festival ever conceived." Google "Bicycle Music Festival" and check out people's pictures and articles! Will we see you there next year?

SHAKE YOUR PEACE! @ Precita Park
photo: BMF Photo Staff Dustin Jensen

TV Appearance during the tour...

2008-05-29T22:52:00.001-07:00

"Thinking Of You All Day" on Park City TV during the 3rd Annual SHAKE YOUR PEACE! Bicycle/Music Tour of Utah. Thanks most to Sonya Cotton, and moist to Evan Carpenter 'the man with the cam,' Matt Cline, the nice guy who pedaled whose name I forgot, and everyone who hosted us in Park City: Ori, Ben the biker who put us up for the night, and Erkki who fed us like the skinny hippies we are.

2008 Bicycle Music Tour of Utah ends triumphantly

2008-05-24T13:31:00.000-07:00

The 2008 3rd Annual Bicycle Music Tour of Utah has rolled to a close. Sonya Cotton and I want to say thank you to all the people who came out to shows, pedaled the P.A., camped out with us, and took picutres of us like this one (thanks Eric). If you took cool shots or video of SHAKE YOUR PEACE! or Sonya Cotton, holler at us ~ we want to add it to the site! A documentary of this tour was filmed by Evan Carpenter and will hopefully be out later this year. Sneak Peeks due in July.

SHAKE YOUR PEACE! featured in Conscious Choice Magazine

2008-05-02T13:50:00.000-07:00

The Seattle magazine: Conscious Choice did a great write-up about SHAKE YOUR PEACE! and the larger bike/music scene:

Pop stars and big cars have long retained a powerful hold on the hearts of impressionable music fans. Each glitzy, each sexy, each high maintenance and each photogenic, they’ve shared the spotlight for decades, on tour and on MTV. But a fresh undercurrent of musical culture is reinventing what’s cool — and taking gasoline out of the equation. Around the country,

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE:
http://consciouschoice.com/2008/05/greenscene0805.html

2008 Tour of UTAH!!!

2008-04-30T12:48:00.001-07:00

SHAKE YOUR PEACE! is getting ready for the 3rd annual bike/music tour of Utah! Starting on May 5 in Logan, the SYP! crew rolls with Sonya Cotton to 14 shows all the way down to Provo, hitting hot springs, campfires, foothills, and a dozen other great bands all along the way. What are you waiting for!?! Grab your bike and come along!

Worldchanging.com shakes its peace

2007-08-31T18:37:00.000-07:00

Worldchanging San Francisco did this article on SHAKE YOUR PEACE! dig it.
http://www.worldchanging.com/local/sanfrancisco/archives/007195.html

The SF Bicycle Music Festival '07

2007-08-25T15:28:00.000-07:00

So I've been pretty busy since getting back from the Utah tour, organizing the Bicycle Music Festival which went down August 11, 2007. The website: www.BicycleMusicFestival.com, has more pics and info about it. If the website looks like it has SHAKE YOUR PEACE! written all over it, that's cause I built it, and I'm a ham. Dig it.

My friends Scott Fetzer (aka Reztef Ttocs) and Sean Jones joined the band for the event.

The event featured 10 bands, at 5 consecutive stops (so 2 bands played at each stop), and the audience, bands, and crew all bicycled from stop to stop in giant Critical Mass style caravans. For everyone involved, it was like a glimpse into what's to come and what's possible. After doing this I feel like my ultimate dream isn't too far off: a HUGE bicycle caravan / bicycle-based tribe of bands, friends, artists hitting the road and taking over every city we come into...

I have a feeling the upcoming N.San Juan, CA to Chiapas, MX tour will be another one of these glimpses.

Here's to the building the bike culture!

Farewell Utah ~ SLC "Live Green Festival"

2007-05-13T00:37:00.000-07:00

The last show in Utah was the "Live Green Festival," where we were able to bid adieu in a grand green style. (shake your) PEACE Utah, we'll see you in '08!

pedaling Mayor Rocky Anderson's speech:

with SHAKE YOUR PEACE! fiddler Chris Jacoby, letting people know about the 5-piece gospel band inside the heart of every woman and man...

the fest shakes their peace...

Carvan rider on the SHAKE YOUR PEACE! Rock & Roll Bicycle Tour of Utah 2017 ~

Dixie Rock ~ St. George

2007-05-11T12:37:00.000-07:00

My homeboy Duffy from Santa Clara opened this show with his beautiful tunes (he also organized it in only 2 days) You can check out his tunes @ http://www.myspace.com/duffrogers. This was probably my favorite show of the tour - the best for last. I'll let the pictures speak for themsleves...

Zion National Park - riding into the promised land

2007-05-10T16:15:00.000-07:00

Riding into Zion I couldn't stop singing the song from Fiddler On the Roof: "Wonder of Wonders." Going as slow as we could to savor every second. We talked about what it would be like to take over a neighborhood in a major city with just bike people, and outlaw cars. All deliveries for the neighborhood would have to stop outside the stone barriers, deliver their goods to bike messengers with XtraCycles and Bikes At Work trailers, who would then bike the goods into the car-free zone...

When I'm in Zion, I feel like "why the hell not!? The world's too beautiful for a community-organized car-less neighborhood to not exist."

My mom and my friend Mo, from Logan, joined my dad and I down in Zion and they'll be with us til St. George (the end o the line). In the meantime we had a great time hiking in Zion:

Mo, me, and Dad looking out near Angel's Landing:

These folks were made for walking, and that's just what they'll do....

can you see Mo in this picture?

steep trails galore ~
practicing our gospel quartet songs with Mo:

Zion and the ride out ~>

2007-05-10T10:57:00.000-07:00

We took over Switchback Jack's in Springdale (Zion's ground zero) and rocked the pedal powered PA amidst TV's blaring basketball. But the party got taken to another level when my dad came up onstage and we rocked our gospel quartet songs:

These folks are planning to ride all the way down to South America later this year. Here I'm explaining pedal-power in a nutshell.

My lovely mom and Mo comprised the SHAKE YOUR PEACE! Caravan this morning - my mom pedaling with me 20 miles out of Zion, and Mo braving the heat (and subsequent heat-stroke) to ride with me all the way into St. George.

75 miles ---> tailwind to Mt. Carmel Junction

2007-05-09T15:42:00.000-07:00

When we woke up in the morning at the "Butch Cassidy Restaurant & Motel" we were surprised to see that the flag outside the window was blowing in a different direction... A TAILWIND!!! We hurried and ate our breakfast, and were absolutely amazed at how fast we were going. We seriously couldn't believe it.

Learning that the mountain pass we'd planned to take up around 11,000 feet at Brian Head was closed from the snow, we knew we were going to have to skip Cedar City and keep heading South. We were so pumped from the tailwind we just kept biking and biking all the way down to Mt. Carmel Junction, 75 miles away, the longest ride of the tour by far.

This was my favorite ride - reaching the "Bryce summit" and cruising downhill for what seemed like 15 straight miles through giant pine trees, meadows, red rock flutes, farms, waterfalls, rivers - all downhill - with a tailwind. I just kicked back on my seat and put my arms straight out to the side and flew.

At Mt. Carmel junction we went into the restaurant that had a sign out front that said: "HO-MADE PIES." We had to see the ho's.

"I guess the restaurant sign is pre-Snoop era huh?" I said to the waiter. "y'bet," he said.

The Big Rock Candy Mountains - Ya can't hold-up the train!

2007-05-08T18:30:00.000-07:00

When we woke up in the morning, we were surprised to see that the mountain range that had been green and sunny when we'd ridden in,

was now totally covered with snow:

It reminded me of the old Utah saying: "if you don't like the weather here in the mountains... wait 5 minutes."

We rode with our pal Headwind through a rainstorm that was like getting peed on by a wooly mammoth in the arctic - cold, wet, primevally strong.

Eventually we came to a bike trail through the Sevier River Canyon, the gateway canyon to the red rocks, and when we got a little ways into it the rain stopped, and the wind became a tailwind for a quick second, and the trail was so flat and beautiful and we were feeling so good my dad said: "I could pedal all the way to South America!" to which I said: "Let's do it!" That little biking ant in the lower right hand corner of the pic is me.But the change of luck was momentary, we were just feeling the effects of being so close to the "lemonade springs where the bluebird sings" - the little Nirvana known popularly as "The Big Rock Candy Mountains." Yep, the same ones from the song.

We stopped at the lodge there for lunch, and on the TV in the kitchen the folks were watching the scene in "Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid" where they realize they have to jump off the 100 foot cliff into the Colorado river to escape the sheriff's posse who's right behind em. Butch's reasoning: "would you make a jump like that you didn't have to?!" My favorite scene.

When we left I forgot my water bottles on the counter next to the cash register, a fact I discovered 30 min. later after we'd climbed up a brutal hill. Now we'd have to ration my dad's water... well, we were out of the Big Rock Candy Mountains. The bad cold stormy weathered billowed back in.

We climbed endlessly through a frozen Siberian landscape, til we finally emerged on the top of a windy hill. To our left down a steep mile long drop was the grey beginning of Paiute Reservoir, 10 miles in the distance straight ahead was Oz - a sunny blue-skied gleaming green valley with the sparkling emerald end of Paiute Reservoir, to our right, tearing down the mountain towards the road ahead was the cloud equivalent of the KGB: an unbelievably cold, turbulent, iron curtain of snow. We looked at each other and like Butch & Sundance just kind of reared back, closed our eyes, and started pedaling as hard as we could, yelling at the top of our lungs: "SSHHEEEEIIIITTTT!" (balloon isn't in the original)

The storm hit us like that water hit Butch & Sundance - a cold decisive smack, a wall of water. The storm was stampeding in at 30 mph from our right side, lodging snow like little needles in our ear shafts, and stinging our cheeks and noses. Visibility dissappeared. The cloud was all around us so that we couldn't see traffic until the headlights were 30 feet away. The sound was like a train engine grinding up a hill. All we could think was: "There's sun on the other side of this fucking curtain! Pedal! Pedal!" My dad hadn't brought any gloves or a winter coat with him, so as our body temperature dropped he pulled over and put on the only extra clothes he had over his icecube hands: white cotton socks, which quickly became the soggiest saddest sock puppets there ever was.

It was a rush - man against nature - exhiliration - survival.
After about a half hour of hacking our way through the ice jungle - we emerged on the other side. Drenched. Cold. Smiling from ear to ear. Cars coming in the opposite direction honked at us in congratulations - it was clear from the look of us that we'd just battled to victory some kind of wild weather beast.

10 miles later we pulled into a small town's only gas station and I got a bag of popcorn and leafed through a book called "Butch Cassidy and the Hole in the Wall Gang" while we thawed. Salt in the mouth and high crime in the eyes, this was a throughly satisfying break.

We climbed back onto our metal horses, marinating in the happy afterglow a person gets after facing Nature and emerging alive, and pedaled out into the country for round 2. All of a sudden, a car honked and pulled off to the side of the road behind us. It was a girl in her mid-20's. She rolled down her window as I walked over. It was the cashier from the Big Rock Candy Mountain resort! "Hey you guys left your water bottles at the front, I figured you'd need em!"

We were in disbelief - 25 miles from Big Rock Candy Mountain, this gal came all this way. I pulled out a copy of Sing It As You Please and gave it to her, and thanked her and thanked her. Big Rock Candy Mountain really is a land that's fair and bright, where the handouts grow on bushes...

No need to hold up a train.

And as we fought Headwind the last 12 miles into Circleville, we still felt the momentum behind of us of having come through that storm - and I knew that even if I broke my fucking leg out here I would crawl on my fists to St. George. And I knew I really would. Ya can't hold up the train...

The Dominguez Boys --> Ephraim to Mystic Hotsprings

2007-05-06T16:54:00.000-07:00

My dad and I love nothing more than to duck under "CAUTION: Closed For Construction" tape, walk on questionable castle or cliff ledges, and fall down steep hillsides through bushes. We've done this in many parts of the world as a matter of fact.

Aiming to keep our streak of dangerous living alive, me and the man who taught me to ride a bike (and the world never forgave him for it) pedaled from the city of Mt. Pleasant in central Utah all the way down to Zion Natn'l Park, singing our trademark gospel quartet and musical theater smash hits to the sagebrush, willows, and cottonwoods.

Along the way we met a surly character named Headwind, and we all came to be good friends over the next 3 days, Headwind singing bass. We told Headwind that we could've been walking faster than we were pedaling when Headwind was in our company, but Headwind just stayed on like the relative who comes to visit, who you give your bed to while you sleep out on the couch, who uses all your toothpaste, who stays a few weeks longer than planned, who's always hovering around when you're trying to talk to your sweetheart on the phone, but who you love anyway cause they're family. Headwind gave us plenty of time to become familiar with our the surroundings, ruminate on the spiritual lessons to be learned by laboring in vain, and remember our favorite lines from The Princess Bride.
We're actually going down a big hill in this video. Enough said.

- At the suggestion of a guy with an amazing mullet ("business in the front, party in the back" as they say down here) we met at The Little Wonder Cafe in Richfield, we stopped in the office of the local paper there (The Richfield Reaper). The editor was real friendly and he even went out in the rain in front of the office with his nice camera and took some shots. This picture ended up running a couple weeks later, but appeared next to the winners of the Miss. Richfield contest, so unfortunately our sex appeal was a little overshadowed. Here our sex appeal can be enjoyed without the boodie distraction of Richfield's perkiest.

- In Monroe, we met a compact, hard, brown, nutty fellow who called himself "Peanut" out in front of an historic and renovated church-building, shoveling, creating a habitat for his desert turtles. It turned out he owned the place, and when he saw how interested we were in it he invited us in to take a look. In the center of the living room was a 20 foot rope hanging down from the ceiling. "Go ahead and grab it and give it a pull," he said. I did, and soon we could hear the sound of church bells ringing above us and out through the town.

After soaking in the Mystic Hotsprings,

Peanut made us a tasty spaghetti dinner and salad with water cress he'd picked from the local river, and put us up for the night in his church. He mentioned that he'd lived in Salt Lake City for awhile, and so I asked him why he'd moved out to Monroe. His answer came straight from the rural spirit: "I don't want to live in a place where I can see the air I'm breathing." Hallelujah Peanut.

- On our way out of Monroe we were doing the "Rain Dance" (jump off the bike and put on mountain of rain-gear, pedal 20 feet, but rain stops, jump back off the bike, take rain-gear off, rpt. x 32) when we ran into a rancher who had just picked up his similarly cowboy booted, camoflauge jacketed, big belt buckled son from kindergarten. He pulled his big white truck over and started up a conversation with us. "I'm a rancher, I raise beef all year, then sell em all at once, then live on that for the rest of the year. It's long hard work. What do you guys do that you get to be out here not working? Well I'll tell you, you wouldn't catch me on one of those, it's way too much work. We ride horses. (son pipes in: "yeah horses!") How old are you? I'm 25 too! You don't gotta wife? I'll tell you what, this (puts his hand on his sons head) is what's important, your priorities'll change when you gots kids. (We ask him about the giant white "SS" carved in the mountain that we'd hoped was unrelated to Nazis) Oh that stands for "South Sevier" (as in Sevier County, we breathed easier). Hey you ever heard of Energy Solutions? Yeah the company that's bringing all that nuclear waste into Utah right. Yeah that asshole went to school at South Sevier High School with my uncle. He was a prick even then, nobody liked him then either buddy! My aunt's had cancer, my mom, my grandma, two of my uncles, my brother, all from the nuke testing they did down south of St. George. ("Yeah," I say, "who needs terrorists when we got the US Government to do such a good job of bombing us!") Well, you're not going to hear me dog the government buddy. (I wanted to say: "Why not? Sounds like they're treating you and your whole family like dogs! They sure as HELL are dogging you boy!")

It was a actually a fun conversation for the two of us I think. Both of us were genuinely curious at this other 25 year old Utah male, who couldn't have grown up any more differently than we did, who couldn't view the world any more differently, and yet who grew up right here in the same state. We said farewell there where we'd met in the middle of the road, he in his huge white truck, me on my huge white XtraCycle, he with his mini-rancher son, and me with my Chicano activist dad.

The Wasatch Academy - Mt. Pleasant

2007-05-02T15:41:00.000-07:00

We woke up in the Peterson's farmhouse, grubbed on country grub, and laid irrigation pipe with Summer and her cousin. Her Dad Steve, had already dug this huge trench, so we just had to roll it in and bury it. I had to wrassle the giant black anaconda of tubing quite a bit to get it to lay in the ground.

We caught the 20mph tail wind, screeching ready, the whole 7miles out to our show at The Wasatch Academy. Here's a pic of the ferocious wind with 2 lads who are standing in its way.The good looking guy with the pink sports bra who pedaled for 20 minutes straight like a cross-dressing Lance Armstrong at the Provo show, had lit the inside of the speaker cabinet on fire, melting our capacitor with his pink prowess. Thus, with the pedal-powered PA out of commission for the next week, we just used the school band's PA. That's Yusuf (a senior) sitting-in on dumbek. Bob the wine-brewing music teacher also joined us on bass. Though folks wanted to pedal the PA, fortunately, my homies Paul & Nate (www.RocktheBike.com) were busy FedExing out another capacitor for me to pick up down the road so the folks in Southern Utah could pedal it when we got down to them.

In the honeybee sunlight, I sang the songs, and told my tales, and afterwards I enjoyed yakking with the kids about what it's like to go to school in Mt. Pleasant, and what their plans and dreams were. A bunch of folks were busy snipping, hole-punching, and painting in the background making CD's. I also was stoked when I found out that I'd completely run out of shirts - the experiment of hauling shirts and patches around has been definitively successful. Thank you Say it Green (www.SayItGreen.com) for the amazing sustainable garments!

The good souls: Bekkah and Vipp invited the SYP! Caravan over to their home for organic quinoa and dal and goodies, smelling like hot salt and warm earth.

Saying goodbye to Matt and my mom (who'd come down from Orem to check it out) and in the shadow of night, my dad and I pedaled away, off toward Ephraim 17 miles away - The Dominguez Boys out on another grand adventure trek.

Payson, Nephi, Fountain Green, Spring City

2007-05-01T13:57:00.000-07:00

Rather than try to relate the entire last week on the road, I'll give you snapshots of the people and places who've collided with the SHAKE YOUR PEACE! Caravan:
Sarah Wagstaff is a meteorilogical phenomenon known popularly as ball lightning: a small orb of white heat that hovers freely through the countryside, electrifying whatever it touches. Sarah Wagstaff is 1/2 Tinkerbell, 1/2 Arnold Schwartzenegger. She's pixie, she's barbarian. She's 100% awesome. During the ride she told me about being a frontline wildland firefighter, a competitive gymnast, and her bicycle trip from Alaska to Florida last year. Me: "What was the longest bike trip you'd BEEN on before you did the Alaska to Florida trip?" Sarah: "Down the street to the store." In a nutshell: hardcore nut the size of a nutshell. Chew on it.

Matt Cline's 6'7 or something, and spent a bunch of time working as a river guide on the Snake (he prounounces it "snek"), and the Colorado, among other large creeks (which is "crick" to Matt). I basically loved hearing him say anything because he's gotta hella thick Utah accent - tounge curled way back in the mouth swallowing the consonants like they were grapes lobbed from 20 feet back. I call the way he talks Clinese (Kline-eeez).
Unfortunately for us, he eventually had to take off to lead a wilderness therapy group out in the desert for a week.
Once when we were riding down Hwy 6 Matt found a scary looking black knife laying among the exploded truck tires and roadkill. He picked it up, squinted out at the sagebrush and muttered in Clinese: "M'glad I gotta knife now. I been eyeing that sagebrush, now I can use this to start me a fire a little later." Me and Sarah just stood there in admiration.

My dad's basically an older much hipper version of me, but he's stronger, and has more grandchildren than I do - otherwise, same. Last summer, my dad and I took a 200+ mile walk along the "Camino de Santiago" in Northern Spain. Now we're biking twice that far through Central and Southern Utah, which is a lot like Spain, if you're having acid flashbacks.

Sarah's aunt and uncle put us up in Payson. They shared their raisin bran and bought us pizza and ignited the ping pong table like it was pongsoline.

In the morning we packed up and discovered there's plenty of ways to haul your shit, none of which require a car, all of which require being awesome: Sarah rocks the B.O.B. trailer, Matt rocks homemade bucket panniers & the fantastical mandolin/unicorn set-up.

How do you rock your bike? www.rockthebike.com check out how other people rock theirs!

At one point we accidentally pedaled 6 miles in the wrong direction, down Highway 6, til about 66 minutes into it we were like - Um... is that the Hotel California? I think we're going West, we want to be going South...... But in getting out into western Utah we stumbled upon the much sought after final resting place of the Arc of the Covenant. Don't tell Indiana Jones or the Nazi's though!
Actually, it was a yellow stone army fortress that the Mormon's had built back into the hillside in the mid 1800's when the US Calvary was going to invade those Mormon "religious insurgents" who were threatening the very morals and freedom of our beloved U-nited Stytes. The US Gov wasn't keen on the polygamy thing you see. They were shoutin: "It's 7 brides for SEVEN brothers!" Utah responded: "We don't care how you Yanks do it back East!" and sang: "If you can't beee, with the one you loooove, honey, love the 10 your with!"

Eventually though, "Operation One Wife 4evr" was succesful, and Utah decided to change their tune: "O beautiful, for spacious skies..." and now Utah's a state.

Cherry trees and sage perfumed the air with their own red and green songs, and the wind let it be known that it could give a shit about polygamy or monogamy - it was erotically rolling itself in every fuzzy nook and cranny of every foothill and fruitstand and bee-wing, splaying itself out on our faces and spinning the gnats around in salty tornados across the valleys.

We talked to some "necks" (that's Matt Cline-ese for "redneck") out in front of the Lisa's Country Kitchen when we got into Nephi that night at 10pm. They couldn't believe that we were carrying so much shit on these tiny little bicycles. I couldn't believe they were carrying hardly any shit in thier giant ass trucks. But we all had laughs and got along fine. The waitress came out to check out our beastful bikes and I took the opportunity to ask her what the kids around here did for fun. "Oh, we cruise the filleds. Steal stop signs. Hang around." I asked her what she meant by "filleds." "You know, the filleds, out in the filleds." We all realized at the same time she meant "fields." And we dug it. The Utah accent strikes again.

Here we are waking up in a filled.

As we labored up a red canyon, we passed a fine swimming hole. Matt and Sarah stripped down and went skinny dipping - mud going up almost to their knees as they waded in.
Our buddy Rachel Gianni joined us for a stretch in Fountain Green.

[the following is a SHAKE YOUR PEACE! story about grandma's and lemonade. If you don't like Norman Rockwell, skip this section: Her grandma and mom came out onto the porch and kindly asked us if we wanted some ice-cold homemade lemonade. Thinking I knew a thing or two I told Rachel's grandma: "I'll have just this much" holding my fingers two inches apart. "Are you sure?" Grandma said. "I'm sure," I said, and grandma just looked at me with one raised eyebrow. But she politely went in and brought us each out our glasses of lemonade.
I held the cold glass in my hand and sipped once. Rational thought left my brains, I automatically downed it as fast as a slap in the face, so stunned by it's shocking goodness I was just kind of bewildered, sheepishly looking down at the 2 naked ice cubes while my eyes scanned the bottom for any lemonade droplets that might still be beaded up somewhere behind them. Then I saw an old white hand close around the glass and lift it out of my hands. I watched as Grandma went back inside smiling and shaking her head, refilling it to the top this time.]

This is a video of the 4 of us cruising down Main St. in Fountain Green. It's a lot like Times Square in Manhattan, minus everything, plus sheep in people's yards.

Matt knew a "shortcut" that took us 7 miles out of the way. But thank God he did. 7 miles out of the way is a town called Mt. Pleasant. There's metal tables and chairs out in front of the "Sleaze Cafe," that are perfect for dirty bicyclists to sit in, to pull peanut butter and bread out of dusty panniers in, and to drink cool water in. We learned these things through experience, which, next to graffiti on the sides of freight trains, is a tip-top teacher.

While we talked about our plan of biking into Ephraim, in the span of 1 hour no less than 4 people from the local boarding high school came to convince us to play for them and the students. Every one of them independently offered us their house to stay in, food, company, conversation. The sheer generosity and goodness of the people convinced us we had to stick around. Who are these folks? What the hell's in this water? What is this place?
The answers are: The Wasatch Academy, trace minerals, and the smallest little liberal enclave in Utah around.

With tears in our eyes we bid adieu to dear Sarah Wagstaff, and Matt and I took off our shoes and walked out onto the campus commons, whose grass felt so nice and cold against our raisined feet. Enjoying the falling sun, and the energy of the high school kids skateboarding, and hanging out together, we threw frisbee with Vipp and Beckah - the science and environmental studies teachers. They picked us a large bouquet of kale and spinach from their school's garden for dinner that night, and Beckah told us about how she ran her diesel car on grease from the cafeteria. I love these people!

A dear friend of Matt's joined us named Summer Peterson. Summer is a large-animal veternarian and if I were a horse I'd definitely feel comfortable asking her to be my family's doctor. Hay! In her good company we rode through the beautiful valley toward her parents home in Spring City, 7 miles away. "The thing I love about this valley," said Matt, "is that it smells like turkeys."

[Honor-System Economics moment: We made a stop along the way at Joe Bennion's pottery shop, which he leaves open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, (he's usually not there) filled with thousands of dollars worth of his exquisite pottery, with nothing more than price stickers on the pieces, and a couple metal boxes where people can put their money and make their own change. In addition to being a professional potter, Joe also river guides in the Grand Canyon and the Colorado, and is a father to three lovely daughters. I got to meet - Adah 19 - earlier that day at Wasatch Academy, and I'd met - Zina 27? - who was involved with BYU Alternative Commencement. If I were Mormon, I'd ask them both on dates for sure!]

Matt and I ate a fine spinach, kale dinner with the gracious Peterson's, and stayed up late listening to Summer play Gillian Welch and other achey/beautiful/country music on her guitar and fiddle. Matt got lulled to sleep next to the big brown dog where he and the dog stayed til morning - Matt muttering Clinese in his sleep. I climbed up to the upstairs guest room/star observatory and slept on top of the sheets stead of in em. in my sleeping bag. Familiarity I guess. Summer probably slept out in the "filleds" with the rest of the country lullaby crooning spirits and nymphs...

BYU Alternative Commencement - Orem, UT

2007-04-28T10:08:00.000-07:00

I grew up in Orem, UT - one of the reddest cities in the reddest of red counties in the reddest of red states. So it was a glad day for me to be able to play "To Protest the War," right here in my hometown, to a crowd of cheering people.

The BYU Alternative commencement, and the courage and chutzpah it took for the organizers and attendees to make it go down in a place like Orem, is evidence to me of an erupting volcano of civic consciousness that's rumbling everywhere. It's like the bear known as "civic spirit" as Commencement keynoter Ralph Nader called it, is waking up from hibernation.

It's a good day when folks remember that every "Freedom" they say they enjoy and that exemplifies their "values," (the abolition of slavery, child labor, racial, gender, and disability discrimination, civil rights, women's suffrage, the huge glob of labor rights: from minimum wage, to the right to form a union) were all combusted out of domestic warfare: cops beating the shit out of traitors, hypocrites, heretics, trouble-makers, and unpatriotic ingrates (nowadays called: "Patriots and heroes") who demanded justice at the feet of their conservative, contented neighbors.

As Nader put it: "dissent is the mother of assent." Dissent birthed every "Freedom" Americans enjoy. Definitely not a point that we're reminded of very often growing up in America.

Though I consider myself an Anarchist, I agree with Nader's means: ignite our civic spirit, actively participate in the decision making processes of our communities (aka: activism), and putting the power back where it belongs: in the hands of the people. I don't however, totally agree with Nader's ends: an America that lives up to its ideals. My ends could care less about "America" or whatever other government that's currently occupying this land calls itself, all I care about is that the people are activated. My feeling is that if folks are actively participating in the civic arena, the rest will take care of itself - whether that takes the form of "government" or councils, or much looser forms of organization. That doesn't matter to me.

I'd like to reiterate how much I admire everyone who organized and participated in this event, and I'd like to thank them again for inviting me to be involved. Here I am talking to Jack Healy, hero of Amnesty International and many other things. He told me about a movie Hollywood's making about his life - it looks like he's either going to be played by Leo DiCaprio or Tobey Maguire.

Highlights for me included Nader remarking from the podium on my performance: "If music is a form of communication, as it certainly is, Gabe really knows how to communicate doesn't he! - with every bone and muscle in his body."

Here's me holding Nader's new book: "17 Traditions," which rocks, and Nader holding "Sing It As You Please," which also rocks.

His demeanor reminds me of Mr. Rogers sort of - very gentle, very strong and wise - grandfatherly. Unlike every politician I've ever met, there's not even one ounce of malice, greed, or competition the man exudes. He's like a redwood tree.

After the "product-placement-picture" above, he told me something that reminded me of something Bob Dylan once said. Nader said that he'd been listening closely to the words of "To Protest the War" and that he appreciated that the words mattered, and that the music was serving the lyrics and not the other way around - something that he missed in much of modern music. Dylan's quote, which is about the same goes: "You can't let the music run your life. Your life has to run the music."

Here's to the alternative grads, the organizers, the speakers, Jon the violinist, my sister Kira who womaned the SYP! table, and everybody who's insisting that their lives run the music, and not the other way around! Here's how it is "leaders" - we play, you dance. Dig it.

After the festivities a number of us went up to violinist Jon's (who KILLED us with his piece at alt.mence. People near me were crying. I had chills on my bones. Nader: "a real master.") cabin up at Sundance, and hung out and played more music. Can somebody say Godspell!?!

It was an out-of-body experience when at one point in the evening, folks who I'd just met that night started requesting SHAKE YOUR PEACE! songs, and then when I played them, knew all the words. I was trying to hang on to reality as all these beautiful voices around me confidently sang all the words to "In the Arms of the Gypsy" when in my mind I felt myself rocking back and forth in the water at All Seasons Marina in Brooklyn, sitting in The Gypsy, on the wooden bench with the yellow foam cushions on it covered in green velour, under the light of our single hanging light bulb, scrawling on a piece of college-ruled paper at the crumbling particleboard collapisble table, surrounded by Nora's plants, and a mason jar full of pens, scissors, and a ruler. I heard "Come to bed already, it's late!" from the other end of the boat, and I remembered what it felt like to wrestle and yank these words out of myself, that I didn't know yet, that didn't exist yet, but that I knew HAD to exist sooner or later.

Filled with this memory, I watched these words sung effortlessly to me, in a cabin somewhere in the distant future, by people I'd never met before.

Songs truly have their own lives.

When we woke up in the morning I took off up Timpanogos to chill at Stewart Falls for awhile. I dunked my head and face in a freezing pool of snowmelt below the falls and just thanked Timpanogos for being there, thanked the mystery for making waterfalls and sunlight and heads and faces that can feel drips of water on them. Then I biked home.

Today I'm heading off to Santaquin... like a beaver continuing to slowly make his home out of the whole big tree called Utah.

Come meet up with the Caravan, and wear your helmet.... TIIIMMMMBBEEEERRRR!!!!

Provo - Remember the Alamo...especially the address.

2007-04-22T17:41:00.000-07:00

I screwed up! I put the address for The Alamo as 240 N. 100 W. on the website and in the email list... but as we all found out, hopefully with a smile on our faces, it was actually 240 N. 1000 W. Sorry about that folks :) I have to admit though, I thought it was pretty funny pulling up to the Mexican Carniceria imagining that the Alamo had become a pinata selling, tejano music blasting, dead cow chopping Mexican butcher shop since the last time I'd played there. I couldn't help but laugh imagining Spencer running out to meet me: one hand holding his sombrero on his head, the other gripping a rubbery looking chicken as he skipped in a wide legged cowboy-booted waddle on over to help me set up the pedal-powered PA in aisle 3. "We made the Alamo a butcher shop, woo-wee!" He'd say as we spaced the bike between the cans of cow stomach and bags of "Mahatma" rice. "Buenas Provo! Esta se llama "En el Embrazo de Gypsy!"

I laid the bicycle beast on its side and went in; asked the dude behind the counter holding the cleaver if I could borrow a cardboard box. He sort of giggled, which I didn't understand, but then he motioned to where the glass counter ended. Still giggling, he took me to the back room where his boss came out, sporting a fine mustache. He explained what I wanted to his boss. Then his boss giggled, and he went toward a pile of boxes stacked near the rear door. What's so funny about asking for a box with these guys I wonder? The boss returned still giggling with a semi bloody beef box "Is this OK?" he asked. "That'll be great," I said. And they just smiled and shook their heads and kept kind of giggling.

Why are these dudes freaking giggling so much? Maybe they'd seen Spencer in his sombrero too? Maybe they saw Spencer in his lacey green thong? I never found out... Any guesses folks? Leave your comments ~ the wilder the guess the better.

I took the box outside and in my best "will work for food" handwriting made a sign with the correct address on it, as more and more victims of my missprint pulled up around me...

We headed over on bikes and in cars over to the white walls of the Alamo on 1000 W.

The Alamo, for those who don't remember, is the headquarters for the crazy cast of miscreants appearing around Utah Valley in Wanted signs as "The Elizabethan Report" - Tony the vocal rodeo dandy, Senator Spector (Peterson for president 08!), and the rest (Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier, etc.).

I hadn't played The Alamo in a year, but of course, in my duty as a patriotic American to remember it, remembered with great fondness.

The show began with a virtuosic performance by Phil Sadler and his band (sickest guitar player I've seen all tour), who spread a thick harmony custard on the room bread which the crowd gobbled like drunken uncles at the buffalo-wing buffet at your Quinciniera. Even though I was having a really hard time trying to make the pedal-powered PA stop trying to sing its own harmony (sorry Phil), his band cut through the feedback and wowed the crowd anyhowed.

The place was packed like a size 19 foot in a size 12 shoe: squished from the front to the back, from the side to the side, toes overlapping toes, but ready to bust out, ready to run, swollen with stored movement...

Us being packed in like that, I started the show with "Skinny Woman," and went from there. Highlights included the folks sitting in the back who seemed to never stop sewing up CD covers, me putting the wrong address for the place in the blog and email list, and the generosity and vibe of the good people who showed up. Thanks Ashley for the painting and CD. Thanks Andrew for the passion.

After the show, the brave soul/musician otherwise known as Liz Rhodes biked with me across Provo to the University Mall Cinemas for the BYU Alternative Commencement benefit screenings of "Unreasonable Man" (doc. about Ralph Nader) and "This Divided State." (doc. about Michael Moore's visit to UVSC - Orem, UT). We caught the last 20 minutes, but even so saw enough to make me respect Ralph Nader even more than I did. I can't wait to play on the same mic he'll speak on at Alt. Commencement...

Huge props to Liz Rhodes for braving the frigid air, and courageously bicycle caravaning with me. For all yall who didn't bring your bikes, you missed a fine telling of the legend of The Carterville Road Stiltwalker.

Next time we meet again at the Alamo,
Let us remember this beautiful night,
and I the address, which I butchered,
and you your faithfully saddled bike.
Yee haw to all the Alamo!
Yee haw to all who came and saw,
We sewed, we sang, we sweat, we sat,
we wore the hot pink training bra...

Pleasant Grove High School - 4/19/07

2007-04-22T16:16:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow they may wrap fishes in it, but SYP! was a star for one whole minute! check out the Daily Herald article on SYP! and the PGHS show: http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/218934/

Russ Mayo, radio teacher at Pleasant Grove High School, is one of those teachers that any of us would've been lucky to've had in high school. The man converted his classroom into a concert venue and got the school to agree to let him host shows (even on school nights) there til 11:30pm, giving the creative cast of kids who go to PGHS the opportunity to not only bring their favorite bands Live on the radio, but also run the sound, lights, and video: making a DVD of the performance, complete with crossfades and dramatic angling, for the performer when they're finished.

My homeboys Trevor and James (who walked 40 miles up to a SYP! show in Salt Lake last year) were among the capable crew working the back booth and stage through the night, and I was totally impressed with the professionalism of their whole outfit.

PG feels like family, I have a lot of love for kids up there. It really all started thanks to Evan and Brady Carpenter, and Caden Rutter, who started convincing their friends to check SYP! out down in Provo, and then pulled a coup convincing their administration to let SYP! come play live at lunch time at PGHS. That was one of the funnest shows ever. If any of you are in high school/college and want SYP! to come play at lunch, let's set it up. Russ even wrote a real nice recommendation letter to help you convice the suits to let us stick our peaces in the mashed potatoes and get sloppy in the joes. You can make it happen!

Highlights of the show include:
- The success of the first ever batch of SHAKE YOUR PEACE! shirts, printed by Say It Green's eco-friendly garment printing process (www.SayitGreen.com), on old recycled shirts, flipped inside out.
- My dad coming up onstage for a spirited rendition of "Church Bell Tone"
- Seeing the old PG crew: Caden, Chelsea, and everyone else; and meeting new folks - Clayton (thanks for pedaling so long and strong man!), Chris, Anne...

Thanks for the support yall!

Provo Canyon: the past, present, and future of music touring

2007-04-16T12:17:00.000-07:00

I've had a great time hanging out with my family this week in Utah County, especially playing with my nephew Pace ("peace" in Italian), who waddles to his toy box and pulls out his rainbow colored xylophone whenever he sees me.

On Wednesday I got to participate in Ashley Sander's Weekly Discussion Night down at Brigham Young University. Ashley's been busy organizing BYU's Alternative Commencement (www.byualternativecommencement.com) to the official one which'll feature Dick Cheney as the keynote speaker. With BYU's reputation as one of the most conservative campuses in North America, the efforts of Ashley and her friends have definitely sent some feathers flying, and peace shaking into smithereens. I love these people.

While there I got to explain the sustainable rock & roll vision to folks (about 30 people) and answer some questions from the crowd.
My favorite question was (don't quote me on the exactness of the quotes, but it was basically): "do you ever wonder if, or worry that, your hope and faith in people, and your vision, aren't rooted in reality and might even be naive?"
I answered: "I think my vision is rooted in reality because of nights like tonight. I mean look around this room. We're at BYU, in the reddest of red counties, in the reddest of red states. Most of you here tonight are Mormon. Most of us were raised here. And yet here we all are - talking about sustainable rock & roll, an alternative commencement, the environment, the importance of being stewards of the community of life, etc. I mean, even in the places on earth most people would never think it would be possible - a new consciousness - trans-religious, trans-ethnicity, trans-political - is emerging. The proof is all of us here tonight. The proof is our bicycles out in the hallway. The proof is the words coming out of our mouths."

On Saturday, The Caravan met at the Orem Public Library. While there we held up a sign Raquel Callis had made in support of the larger www.StepitUp2007.org effort. And it was GREAT - I almost died laughing when this dude in a BMW shouted at us: "Global warming is BULLSHIT!" like he was straight out of Jerry Springer. Just comically irate. Hilarious.

The ride up the canyon was mellow - passing giant rock fins and 12,000 ft. peaks.
The trail up into Johnson's Bowl was way steeper, thinner, and longer than I remembered it - so it was pretty exhilirating for my brother-in-law Andy and I to try manuevering 120 lbs. of bike up it without falling off the edge. I imagined what it must've been like for the American pioneers to navigate these passes with wooden pushcarts, and wagons filled with cast-iron stoves. Nuts.

Coming over the last rise, we looked over Johnson's Bowl - an almost totally flat meadow the size of 2 football fields, mysteriously carved into the side of Mount Timpanogos. Scattered in one area of the bowl are giant stones that look like Druid altars, or like where Aslan got sacrificed by the White Witch. The feel of the bowl however, is very serene and magical - like standing in the center of a giant grassy sattelite sending off gentle signals to The Mystery that are just barely inaudible to the human ear. Up above the rim of the bowl is almost 360 degrees of the craggy snow-topped Wasatch Mountains, filled with shaggy white mountain goats, cougars, and moose.

Dusk settled in suddenly but softly like a navy blue bedsheet getting tossed over your head when you're a little kid. We were turning into ghost people - outlines of faces getting foggier. So Oliver Callis took charge of making the fire while I got busy setting up the PA.

It was amazing to see the juxtaposition of the ancient light of fire and the ultra-modern green neon light of the pedal-powered PA. But suprising to us all, was how in this elemental, ancient, and timeless wilderness kind of setting, the two forms of human-made light seemed equally appropriate and harmonious. The gathering of human beings, wrapped in blankets, surrounding a fire and musicians, all surrounded by monument mountains and the western sky, resonated in all of us in a truthful and primal way. It felt like we were part of a long chain of humanity, with our pedal-powered PA interpreting it in a uniquely 2007 way, but participating in a ritual that our great great great great great great x 600 grandparents had also participated in without a doubt~ the action resonated in our bones.

Debra Fotheringham opened the evening, and played til her fingers became icecubes - what a player, what a voice! She was followed by The Galaxy of Heartbreak, a musician who I've believed (and still do) is the greatest Utah songwriter ever since I first saw him at Juice & Java (Orem's only coffee shop at the time) in 1998, in 10th grade. Honky tonk, country, and folk echoed through Johnson's Bowl while The Caravan pedaled on with gusto. I could only imagine that 3000 years ago my ancient Uto-Aztecan grandpa might've been sitting here in this bowl awaiting his turn to step forward and share his music and tales with his friends. And though the stage is ours now, that mountain, that night, this earth, is ours now - in our modern interpretation of this ancient human ritual I felt like our actions weren't modern at all. I got the sense that what I perceived as a glimpse into the future of music and rock & roll touring, was actually a glimpse into the reality that "sustainable music" is a timeless action, no matter what generation. So for my great-times-a-million grandparents, and my great-times-a-million grandchildren, I yodeled, hollered, and sang like this night was my first and last.

SLC Foothills Show - with St. Boheme and James Miska

2007-04-09T18:31:00.000-07:00

Friends, fans, James Miska, St. Boheme, and SHAKE YOUR PEACE! met at the One World Cafe at 4pm with bicycles and picnic supplies. In Critical Mass, we took over a lane of traffic, climbing up into the foothills of Salt Lake above the Red Butte Gardens, truly digging the scene - laughing, yakking, and feeling the rush you can only get when you're surrounded by a pack of bikers, the cloud of nimble invincibility.

The music, the people, the land, and the view, were all just freaking amazing - yellow flowers had sprouted up everywhere, giant thunderheads from the south of the valley were piling up, but they just kind of spun off an invisible yellow dome of good weather that hung over the central and North valley. The wind stayed mild, but strong enough for small kite flying. The Great Salt Lake was shining as the sun moved closer and closer to settling in it, and the old Saltair with its minarets and towers glowing like purple pencils, looked like the kingdom of Gondor out of the Lord of The Rings.

I don't think anyone who was there will forget it. James started us off with a beautiful set, we followed, and St. Boheme closed, all powered by the sexy-legged audience via the pedal-powered PA. The concert ended with a group sunset watching and cuddling everywhere.

After the show, we and the boys from St. Boheme rocketed down to the studios at X96 (96.1 KXRK FM) and went on the air Live with DJ Portia (bad dass woman). Every foot and hand was clapping and stomping in the studio as we did To Protest the War, letting the Wasatch Front know how we do it SHAKE YOUR PEACE! style. May I say that I freaking love the dudes of St. Boheme? They are such GOOD freaking people. Check out their music, dig em, love em.

I didn't think the day could get any more ideal-bike-tour-y, but then a bunch of us had a sleepover at our friend Mo's house up in the Salt Lake hills. We talked to her little brothers, watched a tape of her dad on Oprah Winfrey in '94 explaining a virutal reality flying machine he'd invented, and talked til 6 in the morning.

This my friends, is why I bike tour. It's basically exactly what I would describe as a perfect day on the bike tour - definitely the highlight. I hope you can all be there at the next outdoor show on Saturday April 14th in Johnson's Bowl in Provo Canyon.

SLC - Main Library afternoon show.

2007-04-08T22:00:00.000-07:00

Today we played a very fun, very mellow, very hot show at the Salt Lake Main Library.
My nephew Pace and my family came up for it, and these are a couple videos from their camera. Wherever Pace goes, he's truly the most entertaining thing around! I hope you enjoy watching him do the Walking Man and the Trying To Get Along dance as much as I do...

Dedicated SHAKE YOUR PEACE! fans: Mason, Mattea, Pace, Connor, & Olive

SLC - Chilling with Chris and One World Cafe

2007-04-06T23:56:00.000-07:00

I took SHAKE YOUR PEACE! fiddler Chris down to work at Sam Weller's bookstore yesterday on the XtraCycle.

Today we played the One World Cafe.
For those of you who don't know about One World Cafe and their philosophy, I highly recommend you check em out (www.oneworldeverybodyeats.com) - they're a for-profit business that has no prices on any of the food they make. Like with SYP! - you pay what you feel is appropriate, or you can do a work trade.

They told me after the show that they'd set a record that night for the most amount of people that had ever come through in night, and the most money they'd ever made. Thanks to everyone who came out and supported SHAKE YOUR PEACE! and the One World Cafe!

You know the tree by the fruit it bears.

2007-04-04T21:23:00.000-07:00

What can I say about my homestate of Utah? I love the land beyond measure. It's like medicine to me.

It honestly fills me with rage then when I see what the current American culture that occupies my homestate is doing to the land - burying it under their "development." It's like arriving home and going into your kitchen to find your out-of-town cousins piling raw human excrement on the homemade ceramic plate that your great great great grandmother had made herself and given to you all as a priceless gift to pass down.

I'm embarrased, I'm angry, I'm saddened that my own human family could be so lame and ignorant, tacky, and ugly.

I'm not a Christian, but I'm down with Jesus when he said: "You know the tree by the fruit it bears."

Really, I don't care if people call themselves Mormon, Catholic, atheist, Evangelical, Mexican, Pioneer, Anarchist, Green, Native American, White, Black, Progressive, whatever, and really I don't care what they say they have to teach me. I taste the fruit their tree bears.

No matter what a people call themselves, or say they believe in, or cite as their cultural references, if the fruit that that people bears is toxic air, stripmalls, poisoned water, Chevron refineries, SUV's, sameness, standardization, "development," obesity, cancer, sprawling, nuclear waste depositories, landfills, majestic wild animals in fenced off pens for human entertainment (like Lagoon Amusement Park's "Wild Kingdom Train" that I rode by today ~ see picture) etc. etc. etc. then what is the tree?

Although it's obviously an oversimplification to lump folks into two categories, my gut feeling is that like Ishmael said in Daniel Quinn's book: "Ishmael" - culturally speaking, it seems that there's just these two cultural tendencies in people: the Taker tendency, and the Leaver tendency. Whatever a Taker culture wants to call itself or whatever - the fruit always looks the same, you know what I mean. I don't care if you're Muslim, or an environmentalist or whatever, cause to me all I see is an SUV crowding me and my bike off the road, know what I'm saying? Whatever you call your tree, the fruit is an SUV. So then, knowing the tree by the fruit it bears, I see Taker. I don't see Muslim, environmentalist, Mormon, whatever you want to call yourself.

Similarly, whatever the Leavers call themselves, the fruit their trees bear is equally distinctive: social harmony, clean air, strong healthy people, trustworthy people, rivers and creeks so clean you could drink out of em, homemade homes and products, local organic food, creativity, hiking, biking, walking, respect for the entire Community of Life, all that good stuff.

With SHAKE YOUR PEACE! and in my own life, I'm trying to cultivate more culturally Leaver tendencies in myself, and dismantle the Taker ones that I was raised with and still practice in spite of myself a lot of the time.

In the meantime, I've been tasting the fruit from the culture that's imposed itself on Utah and it tastes nasty to me. It tastes Taker. I feel like the land of Utah's trying to teach the tree, but the tree is deaf. It continues growing out of control, working as hard as it can to create nowhere, everywhere. Replicating its tasteless, placeless, self like cancer - putting wilderness and health "under control" and under concrete.

What do you think?

I don't want to divide the world into two cultural categories, but when I leaned my bike against this fence I thought to myself, "I wonder which side of the fence people see themselves being on? Why?"

Post your comments. Let's hear it.

Ogden: Amnesty Int'l benefit, and KWCR 88.1

2007-04-03T23:35:00.000-07:00

Today was RAD - Ben and I left Logan at 11am and pedaled hard towards Ogden, trying to make sure we got to the KWCR 88.1 studio by 4:00 for our LIVE-on-air performance. We passed through a number of Lord Of the Rings-worthy landscapes...

Interesting moments:

~ Ben does the amazing kneel-pee, which can be executed at the side of any road, no matter how little cover there may be. It looks like he's praying. I'm inspired to emulate (pic to the left). The kneel pee technique will now baptize the earth all the way down to St. George. Hallelujah.

~ Being skinny, being vegan, I try to stuff as much bananas, apples, chlorella, peanut butter, maca, Clif Bars, and anything else that'll fit in my face when I'm out on my bike. I figure that if overall, I'm putting healthy nutrient rich stuff in my body, I'll have some energy left to perform.

At our first food break, Ben pulls out these tennis ball sized clusters of what look like a multicolored model of an atom's nucleus. I'm like: "what the hell are those?" Ben explains with his mouth full of marshmallowy crunchy dust, that his girlfriend Drea made them for him, and they're like rice-krispie treats only made with Trix instead. I'm like "Trix like, silly rabbit Trix are for kids?" "Yep."
I shared my food with him for the rest of the trip.

~ Ben and I traded bikes for about 10 miles ~ me riding his BOB trailer and he riding my XtraCycle. There wasn't even a comparison; the Xtracycle handled so damn well with its long rigid framing, it was just scary to be on the BOB. At one point, I tipped the BOB over in the middle of an intersection into a BOB-typical pinched angle. It took us 30 car-honking seconds to figure out how to angle the bike in such a way to leverage the bike upright against that tweaked angle.
The XtraCycle on the other hand, you can get up in 3 seconds with just a solid shove. So basically what I'm saying is, if an evil blue genie ever comes out of a water bottle you rub at some point during a bike trip in the future, and the genie says "I'monna transfowm yo ass to a bike-hauling system!" request that the genie make you an XtraCycle.

Weber State University sits up on this killer hill, which is great for WSU, and not so great for dudes pulling obscene amounts of music equipment. So we pulled in to the KWCR studio hella late at 4:45pm, tired, Ben wiping the banana and peanut butter from his Quigley-Down-Under-era Burt Reynolds mustache, me from my growing cactus garden, and both of us off our instrument cases where it'd dripped in patterns closely resembling seagull shit, apologized to Brad Denney, the extremely gracious music director of KWCR, and started unpacking our instruments.
Despite the rush, we were hella stoked to get on the air. Ben ran to the bathroom and I refilled my water bottle. 4:55. We started tuning, 4:58. "OK you guys ready to go on in a couple minutes?"
Head's still buzzing and light from the ride we took our seats in front of radio mics the size of a roll of paper towels and tried to not fall off the nice rolly chairs.
At one point I was sure I was going to become a comatose Mexican there in the studio if I didn't get some food, so I pulled out a Clif Bar, packaging all crinkly and loud and started munching there during the interview.
Brad was nice enough not to throw me out.
Ben noticed this, so he motioned for me to pass it over.
As Ben had guessed, he didn't throw Ben out either.
We were happy.
There we were, recovering from our gorgeous 50 mile bike ride, getting interviewed and playing LIVE on the air, munching on a noisy-ass Clif bar, and already getting prepared to play our Amnesty International benefit that night, powered by the pedal-powered PA.
THIS was sustainable rock & roll bike touring!

Thanks to the Stout family, Katelyn, Dani, Dani's hubby who's name I forgot this second, and their super generous mom, the Amnesty benefit was bad ass. The scene up at WSU is strong, and not only because the audience pedaled the PA for the whole show like champions, but also in their involvement with cool social justice orgs.

Thanks to Brad Denney for his comprehensive hospitality and support of SHAKE YOUR PEACE! and for putting us up for the night. You the man Brad.

Biking with dad to Logan, and Logan rocks the bike

2007-04-02T23:50:00.000-07:00

During my seven hour layover in Reno I went out and played on the street. People were dropping handfuls of quarters... interesting I thought - quarters.
Then I realized- the slots! Of course! This place is bad ass for a busker: everyone's got loose change! Just a tip to all yall traveling buskers.
After a wild night on the train that included an impromptu lullaby concert for a rowdy group of 50 year old women and their beautiful 20-year old daughters in the viewing-car, my parents met me at the station in SLC and I had a great time with them eating breakfast at Sage's Cafe - the best Vegan restaurant in SLC.
I practiced with fiddler Chris Jacoby for a couple hours and my parents went for a walk. Man it was nice to be playing with Chris again. What a talented guy. Jesus. We're both stoked for the Salt Lake shows he'll be playing with me.
While mom tailed in the car, my dad and I embarked on our bicycles for a father-son canyon conquering - climbing over a thousand feet through a beautiful windy canyon to Logan while we got rained on. We loved it - we sang our favorite gospel songs and Mexican folk tunes in our loudest Dominguez harmony. Stay tuned for some reprises at various SYP! shows during the Utah tour. The ride made my dad the 1st official caravan rider of the Utah 2007 tour. Thanks dad!
In Logan I got put up by the great guys on the Boulevard: Tanner Lex Jones and Beaux (who both opened the Logan show), Wooley, and Hoss. Thanks guys!
The show rocked the bike down to the 60's roots of the green shag carpet. Folks got up and pedaled hard, soft, and in rhythm to the music, however they were feeling it. People loved the Down Low Glow (www.RockTheBike.com) and we were all glowing from the feeling of satisfaction that only comes with human-powering a show. Sweaty and happy, we ended the evening by pulling out the hole punches, paint, and scissors for some quality CD making.
It was super rad to be accompanied by my homeboy Ben Abbott on mandolin and harmony vocals!

Wooley was the first person to ever power a bike-transported pedal-powered PA at a show. Thanks Wooley.

TO DO: Make sure your tarp is long enough...

2007-04-01T18:00:00.000-07:00

The bus would only be there for 5 minutes...
No sweat I thought, luck's on my side most of the time, I can get this here XtraCycle disassembled and into a box in time - I mean, all I had left was the front wheel! So in the San Francisco Amtrak office, out on the piers overlooking the Bay Bridge, I kneeled down in front of my bike like young Arthur at the sword in the stone, ready to perform the operation that my dad had taught me to do when I was 8 years old. A smile broke out across my face - after packing all night, not sleeping, and pedaling like a maniac through SF morning traffic, I'd made it in time, and now I was going to catch this bus, and soon be on a train, my favorite mode of long-distance transport, sleeping like a baby watching the West go by, gonna go rock the bike in Utah for 5 weeks...
I grabbed the knob and quick-release and gave a twist... but to my surprise, there wasn't the well-greased feeling of metal skewer sliding smoothly in a tire hub.
Nothing.
Huh?
So I grabbed tighter and twisted harder. Nothing.
What in the world?
I looked at the hub more closely, my heart starting to beat a little faster:
the front wheel was totally rusted to my fork - welded, more like it. I started to panic. What the hell do I do now, I didn't bring any pliers or wrenches with me...
My mind raced back to the tarp I used to cover the XtraCycle when I put it up for the night at The Pink Palace, that old tarp that wasn't quuuiiiite long enough to cover the front wheel... all that rain... shit! I ran out to the bus driver and said WAIT man! Wait just a few minutes, wheel's rusted, pliers, I find, wait, be back... or something.
I ran through the fishermen and tourists, waiters sweeping under the tables, asking anybody who looked like a plier-carryin kind of person if they had pliers I could borrow. A phone man who looked like Santa Claus took pity on me, and told me, hey man I got some pliers over in my truck. Painfully slowly, he started walking over there truck while I bounced up and down all around him like a 7 year old brother at your high school house party. He flinked open the side hatch and pulled out all I wanted for Christmas at that moment. I almost kissed Santa Claus on his big fat slightly drunk nose. I ran as fast as I could back to the bus - I GOT PLIERS! I GOT PLIERS! HOLD THE BUS! BE BACK, HOLD! and ran back to the station office, throwing myself on my frontwheel like George Foreman falling off a trampoline - with a stuttering thud, I fumbled to get the pliers on the quick release - got it - I gripped the shit out of it - tug - yank - hand about to explode... "Last call for the bus to Emeryville, last call." Shit! Wait! The tire gave! IT GAVE! I spun furiously at the wheel, trying to imagine how I was going to have the time to tape up the box as well... Nevermind, nevermind that now. It's off! I threw the bike into the box with a cacauphony of clank and started pawing at the cardboard flaps. "The 1632 to Emeryville has left. The 1632 has left, thank you." The sound hit me like water does when you have all your clothes on - it was like a brain disconnect - bus has left, but I'm not on it. Wait a second - I'm here. Here now. And that bus is just, not here anymore.
A smile started to break across my face like the sun rising over Berkeley across the bay. It was like when the water finally gets to the last dry inch of your foot inside your shoe and you realize there's no escaping it: you're totally wet, and you got all your clothes on, it's not the situation you expected, but goddamn it! Let's enjoy baby!
I pedaled home feeling like - I did what I could. All's well. And slept til 8pm that night.
I caught the train the next morning. And all was well.

Living in a 7' x 9' tent on a roof in San Francisco

2007-01-31T01:19:00.000-08:00

About living in a tent, on a roof, in San Francisco's Mission District, and a misadventure in Crested Butte, Colorado. What's up friends of SHAKE YOUR PEACE! This is my first blog post ever - I hope you dig it. Since mid-December I've been living up on the roof of my house in a 7' x 9' summer tent. It's been totally amazing, and not just amazing in a "looks-like-base-camp-on-Everest" kind of way, or the "feel like an anthropologist on a wilderness expedition of San Francisco every night" kind of way, but even amazing in a "it's only $100 a month rent so even if you hate tents you'd love this" kind of way. The most prissy folks I've met out here who start scrunching up their faces when I've told them I'm living in a tent suddenly light up when I get to that part. At this point I'd personally pay full price to live in this tent I like it so much! Maybe I'm a little too pleased with myself; I'm actually living in the little magical fort I'd be picturing as a kid when I'd be busy assembling blankets and cushions on the living room floor... I hope there's not some Icarus kind of lesson coming soon - there's no ocean I'd fall in, just the shopping cart filled with plastic bottles that the dude who smells like the freeway pushes around. But he's my homie anyways so that'd be fine. In fact he calls me "Boo," for real. "Don't do the Vodka Boo. I did it and it's no good man. I do like the beer though. The beer's nice. Do you want a beer Boo?"

I don't think I ever want to live in a house again... I haven't modified it too much since I got it - just put a tarp over the roof to keep the rain out, and I ran an extension cord out the bathroom window and through my front door (zippers baby) so I could have electricity. In fact, I'm writing this here blog from inside the glowing dome.

I live in the Mission District of San Francisco. It's a very culturally vibrant neighborhood but honestly, it's the fucking ghetto. People get shot here all the time and I sometimes I hear it, then hear about who it was that got shot the next morning when homies from the block come over to visit my housemates. Still, the folks I live with in The Pink Palace, as the musicians collective I've been living on top of is known, are RAD. We're like a living museum of poor ethnic musician guys: from Puerto Rico, Peru, Cuba, Jamaica, and the Philippines. The garage has been converted into a practice space so there's congas and chekere's laying around next to guitars and the washing machines. People from the neighborhood come over all the time and "work out" as Quique the conga player calls it. I've worked out with him a few times but it's sort of like having a thumb wrestle with Chuck Norris - my hands are cracked and bleeding and he's just warming up. His hands are like baseball mitts, and he could catch the beat with those fuckers from freaking 79,000 miles away. El Maestro. He could probably kick Chuck Norris' ass, with sheer brainpower alone.

I shouldn't talk too much shit about the Mission either. Despite the violence, it s pretty much my favorite neighborhood in San Francisco for real, and I feel really really lucky to have the tent set up going. This is the view of the tent from our neighbor "G's" house. That's Potrero Hill to the right, and way off in the distance to the left is the skyline of downtown SF:

None of the neighbors have complained yet, so that's great. There was almost an incident the night we had a pelting rain storm and 70mph winds and my tarp was snapping and flapping like a snare drum ensemble practicing. But I went out with my duct tape and just started cinching down every inch of excess flappiness. Pretty soon it got down to just about one drummer. Going to sleep was tough - the walls of the tent kept heaving in and out like it was going through seizures. I imagined waking up on the front lawn of my house in Utah, surrounded by a pile of wet clothes and papers and busted tent mess...that wouldn't be so bad. Or maybe I'd wake up in China...where they'd be making versions of SHAKE YOUR PEACE! for 80% less than I'm making it for. Maybe I'd wake up in Oz... where Dorthy would have giant hairy man legs and a booming baritone busting out of her fabulous red sparkly leotard... wait! That's not Oz! That' s the Castro! And lo, he awoke and found before him the shining city of San Francisco, and it was good. But the cool part about being in Oz is that I can jump in my blue hot air balloon and get taken back to the wilderness at any time baby. This is the hot air balloon from the ground:

It's sort of a half-buried hot air balloon. An emerging balloon. A balloon-rise. Here it is again at night:

This shot reminds me of Crested Butte, Colorado one winter when the town got buried in so much snow that the tops of the trees were no more than round lumps coming out of 13 feet of ground level snow. It was like if you stuck a small piece of broccoli under a huge white linen bed sheet - it was just one seamless flow of soft white with small ripples here and there.
Anyways - the snow made every light, big or small, glow like a yellow christmas light, just like in this picture.
A funny story about that trip though, is that one time in the house we were staying in, all of the bathrooms became occupied at the same time, and I really really had to shit. I couldn't hold it. So I grabbed a chair, dug a path out to the road with it, then ran toward a wall of snow that I knew had an open field underneath it. I dug at the wall of snow until I made a little trail into it. Now it was getting into danger zone. Before I realized I had no toilet paper I'd already hung my ass off one edge of the chair and was squeezing out steamers into the Antarctic landscape. Shortly thereafter I noticed that I hadn't really thought about the fact that you pee when you poo, and was more than amused to find out that I'd just peed all over the inside of my pants, as well as the wooden chair whose top was now turning into an ice-skating rink the size of a 12-inch record. What was even funnier was when I finally did realize that I had no toilet paper. And funnier than that, that these were the only ski pants that I'd brought. And even funnier that I was so supposed to compete in them the next day at the ESPN2 Winter X-Games - which turned out to be the pinnacle of my extreme sports career. Yes, indeed, I was in the Winter X-Games once. First and last time. You might say that career sort of went down the shit hole.... But hey, at least I found that shit hole and filled it that time. Skill ladies and gentleman! I filled the shit hole with skill! One brown steamer on an Arctic expedition signing off.